It’s Nothing, Really

God made everything out of nothing, but the nothingness shows through. ~ Paul Valery

Eternal nothingness is fine if you happen to be dressed for it. ~ Woody Allen

Nothing is built on stone; all is built on sand, but we must build as if the sand were stone. ~ Jorge Luis Borges

One’s condition on marijuana is always existential. One can feel the importance of each moment and how it is changing one. One feels one’s being, one becomes aware of the enormous apparatus of nothingness – the hum of a hi-fi set, the emptiness of a pointless interruption, one becomes aware of the war between each of us, how the nothingness in each of us seeks to attack the being of others, how our being in turn is attacked by the nothingness in others. ~ Norman Mailer

The greatest purity is nothing or nothingness – no thinking, no desiring, no imagining. You are then one with the moment and the great movement of life so nothing can happen that is not right. ~ Barry Long

Meditation is the dissolution of thoughts in Eternal awareness or Pure consciousness without objectification, knowing without thinking, merging finitude in infinity. ~ Swami Sivananda

Meditation hasn’t got a damn thing to do with anything, ’cause all it has to do with is nothing. Nothingness. Okay? It doesn’t develop the mind, it dissolves the mind. Self-improvement? Forget it, baby. It erases the self. Throws the ego out on its big brittle ass. What good is it? Good for nothing. Excellent for nothing. Yes, Lord, but when you get down to nothing, you get down to ultimate reality. It’s then and exactly then that you’re sensing the true nature of the universe, you’re linked up with the absolute Absolute, son, and unless you’re content with blowing smoke up your butt all your life, that there’s the only place to be. ~ Bobby Case

I used to believe that anything was better than nothing. Now I know that sometimes nothing is better. ~ Glenda Jackson

Ultimately, Leibniz argued, there are only two absolutely simple concepts, God and Nothingness. From these, all other concepts may be constructed, the world, and everything within it, arising from some primordial argument between the deity and nothing whatsoever. And then, by some inscrutable incandescent insight, Leibniz came to see that what is crucial in what he had written is the alternation between God and Nothingness. And for this, the numbers 0 and 1 suffice. ~ David Berlinski, The Advent of the Algorithm: The 300-Year Journey from an Idea to the Computer

People have their own deaths as well as their own lives, and even if there is nothing beyond death, we shall differ in our nothingness. ~ E. M. Forster

If it is nothingness that awaits us, let us make an injustice of it; let us fight against destiny, even though without hope of victory. ~ Miguel de Unamuno

I love talking about nothing. It is the only thing I know anything about. ~ Oscar Wilde

It is, no doubt, an immense advantage to have done nothing, but one should not abuse it. ~ Antoine de Rivarol, Petit Almanach de nos Grands Hommes

If you would improve, submit to be considered without sense and foolish with respect to externals. Wish to be considered to know nothing; and if you shall seem to someone to be a person of importance, distrust yourself. ~ Epictetus, Enchiridion

Drawing on my fine command of language, I said nothing. ~ Robert Benchley

Nothing was ever done so systematically as nothing is being done now. ~ Thomas Woodrow Wilson

It’s not true that I had nothing on. I had the radio on. ~ Marilyn Monroe

About This Site

This site offers a daily column on current events, and unlike other blogs, in long form. Short posts pointing to this and that and saying "Oh my!" seems a bit lazy. Columns here are an attempt to think things through. If you'd like to come along for the ride, fine. If you have neither the time nor patience for that, that is also fine - you can click on the LINKS tab at the top of the page and visit the sites that offer quick hits. Those provide the raw material for the analyses here.

The views here are mine alone, save for the occasional column from Ric in Paris or comments from key readers, like Rick, the News Guy in Atlanta, and others.

Commentary and guest columns are posted here, but there is a sister site, Just Above Sunset Photography, where images are far more important than words. That site is updated daily. Take a look.

JUST ABOVE SUNSET has been online, in various formats, since May 2003. Click on the ABOUT tab at the top of the page for more on that, and a note on who I am.